Who Can Still Afford State U?

As public colleges spend more and get less from the states, tuition costs are shifting to parents and students—often putting higher education out of reach.

By

Scott Thurm

Dec. 14, 2012 9:33 p.m. ET

When Steve Joiner attended the University of Colorado in Boulder in the late 1980s, his parents—an Air Force mechanical supervisor and a teacher—paid his tab of about $4,000 a year, roughly $8,600 in today's dollars. He earned a master's degree and became a high-school math teacher.

In August, Mr. Joiner's daughter Akaysha, the valedictorian of her high-school class, enrolled at CU, as the big campus here is known. But tuition, room,...